The iSkills coures are...

• Part of the Libraries' response to OSU president, E. Gordon Gee's charge to "Put students first." In this case, our attempt to put our student employees' academic needs first.
• Online information literacy courses modeled on our successful online credit course, Internet Tools and Research Techniques.
• Taken during students' work hours so they can be paid at their regular hourly wage.
• Not for academic credit.

iSkills is ...

• Sixteen hours of information literacy instruction, so that our students will know how to find, evaluate, and use online information effectively.
• Required of newly hired student assistants working primarily in Reference public service postitions at Ohio State University Libraries.

iSkills Circ is...

• A shorter version of our original iSkills course, it is ten hours of information literacy instruction.
• Required of newly hired student assistants working primarily in Circulation public service postitions at Ohio State University Libraries.

iSkills and iSkills Circ are delivered through Carmen, OSU's online course management system.

Students have one quarter to finish the course and may be enrolled in any quarter of the year.  Supervisors whose students begin in Autumn Quarter have the option to delay those students' enrollments until Winter Quarter.  To finish in one quarter, they have to work on iSkills about 2 hours per week.  In order to finish iSkills Circ in 1 quarter, we expect they will need to work about 1 hour per week.

Impact:  Student assessment is provided by pre- and post-tests on student information literacy skills and information, pre- and post-surveys of each student's confidence about their information literacy skills, and two quizzes over each of the tutorials. Students also have the opportunity to anonymously evaluate the course.